Old and Stale? — Aging Researchers, Funding Trends, and the Doughnut Effect
Proposals to get more money to younger researchers shine a light on the aging cadre of academic researchers and the lack of succession we risk with current practices.
Virtual Reality Research — Some Early Problems with Data Reanalysis and Risks of Open Data
The idea of “reanalysis” needs to be rethought, if recent examples are any indication of what this trend could do to science.
Surprise, Surprise — The Web Turns Out to Be Too Persistent
The recent “right to be forgotten” case raises a corollary issue for scholarly publishers — are you managing your archives so that users have been given the “right to ignore”?
The Editor — A Vital Role We Barely Talk About Anymore
An alien landing in the scholarly and scientific publishing world today, reading all the opinions about how to make things more efficient and effective, might be forgiven for thinking there are only authors, readers, librarians, and reviewers. After all, those […]
Letter to a Change Agent
Organizations seeking change will often turn to an individual to bring about that change. The challenge for such a change agent is how to move the organization forward without breaking it.
Cascades and Volcanoes — Are the Problems of Science in Public Discourse Getting Worse?
Hysteria over a supervolcano leads to speculation about the eruptions of misinformation all around us. And, why exactly are we seeing so many recycled news stories in social media these days?
Exhibition Prohibition — Why Shouldn’t Publishers Celebrate an Improved Impact Factor?
A trend toward shaming journals that promote their impact factors needs to be rolled back. Impact factors are journal metrics. It’s the other uses that need to be curtailed.
Well, Blow Me Down — A Tale of Spinach, Citations, Nutrition, Epistemology, and Cognitive Ease
More and more studies are emerging showing how misdirecting and expanding citations can lead to long-term misconceptions and mistaken belief systems in the sciences.
Instruction Junction — The Ballooning Lists of Editorial Policies, and the Burdens They Create
Long “Instructions to Authors” filled with ancillary policies and undifferentiated requirements don’t help authors, staff, or editors. As the graveyard for unmade decisions, they’ve only gotten longer and more opaque. Maybe it’s time to clean yours up!
Interview with Gordon Nelson — Public Access Policies, Open Access, and the Viability of Scientific Societies
An interview with the President of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents, on the unintended and potentially damaging consequences of public and open access mandates and embargoes.
Housecleaning at the Directory of Open Access Journals
The DOAJ is kicking out hundreds of predatory and scam publishers that found their way into the directory, and tightening standards to ensure that they don’t sneak back in. Which makes things a bit awkward for a community that, for years, has been insisting that predatory OA publishing isn’t a problem worth worrying about.
And the New Maxwell Perkins is . . . Google!
Google recently disclosed that they give Web sites higher ranking if they are encrypted. This is but one example of how Google serves as a gatekeeper of the Internet, making cultural decisions in the name of technological elegance.
Your Question for the Day — What Is “Peer Review”?
A recent “Slate” article shows what can go wrong when we talk about “peer review” as if we all share a common definition about an unchanging phenomenon.
The Authors Guild Loses (Again), and HathiTrust Wins–But What Does It Mean?
The Authors Guild’s lawsuit against HathiTrust over the latter’s massive library of digitized print books has been dismissed by the Second Circuit Court. What does this mean for libraries, authors, and readers?
The 1% of Scientific Outputs — A Story of Strawmen, Sensationalism, and Scopus
A paper claiming to have identified “the 1%” in productive published researchers may suffer from problems with disambiguation, timing, and scope.